The MoFo Top 100 Foreign Language Film Countdown

One small question... why the French flag for Incendies? It's a Canadian film/production spoken in Arabic/French. No big deal. Just wondering what's the reason.

The Hunt

Lucas: What are you saying? Have you got something to tell me?
Agnes: Stop it, Lucas.
Lucas: You want to tell me something?
Theo: Relax, Lucas.
Lucas: The whole town is listening. Tell me! What do you want to say?
Agnes: Stop it, you ****ing psychopath!
Lucas: I want a word with Theo. Look into my eyes. Look me in the eyes. What do you see? Do you see anything? Nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing. You leave me alone now. You leave me alone now, Theo. Then I'll go. Thank you.

Mob mentality, witch hunts, and how one rumor regardless of how unlikely can spread like something far worse than the accusation itself is done exceedingly well in this film.
It is a hard watch that angered me, seeing what an innocent man goes through because of how everyone around him - people who know him for practically his whole life will easily think the worse and d@mn him for it.

It is d@mn near impossible NOT to write a review on this film without going on a tangent about the subject matter and I've had to stop, delete and start again several times to prevent myself from doing just that.

I do believe this is an excellent film though it is one that is very, very hard to watch without hitting that emotional anger at what befalls him and how he's treated by the town he was born in and lived his life in.
Even in the end scene, a year later when things "appear" to be slowly coming back to what they are and what occurs in the woods. . . making for a very strong and significant ending to this film.

Incendies

. . . f@ck me

It is VERY IMPORTANT you DO NOT READ this review if you haven't seen it yet.

Because you can NOT speak about this film without talking about it. And, thankfully, when glimpsing reviews as they came in without delving into them, I was very happy to have skipped over a very important aspect that had a helluva impact.
Said impact brought the reading of the letters to the father and the son, by that person, and the final reading of the last letter by the twins all the more emotional.

The fact that I didn't see it coming and just how invested I was, especially when I thought the initial reading of the will and a few scenes after made me question the interest and involvement that may be lacking says a lot of the Director.

And for some odd reason, I had completely forgotten Villenvue's past films (don't ask me why I have no idea) and that added unbiased viewing even added more to the eventual mesmerizing effect of the film. And, in the process, those visceral moments that, without going into the absolute graphics, had an immense effect overall.
Along with the locations, the people along the way, and the fact that the twins had to visit their mother's homeland really brought a more substantial impact to what she had to impart to them.

The harsh truth.

Even more so for the brother/father.
As he read the words of Nawal addressed to the father. And then, the beautiful words to the son. Very, VERY powerful.
One of contempt. The second; of love.
While the twins will have all kinds of issues to contend with, I think the son/father, having experienced the horrors of that time and became a tool of that horror was able to find something beautiful, that we all seek. A mother's love.
And that, my friends, is some very powerful stuff. Expressed in that final scene with him visiting her grave. The sorrowful peacefulness of it all.

No reason, beyond that I'm not familiar with all of these films and have been mostly going off the language listed on tmdb and hoping that's right! I'll change it to Canadian.